


Let Me Love You in Every Way

by SpaceVinci



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, I already posted this elsewhere but here you go, M/M, Mark of Cain, Set around season 9 or 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4979269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceVinci/pseuds/SpaceVinci
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the object of the Mark is to hate and kill, then wouldn't the cure be to love?</p>
<p>The Archangel of Love sends Castiel on a mission to retrieve an object representing three different ways Dean has loved; but the journey will come at a price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. To Friends

It was Sam who found him first, somehow. Castiel was still embarrassed that he wasn’t the one to think of it first, but Sam had always been incredibly good at research. So it was Sam that first thought to contact Chamuel.

Castiel remembered the Archangel of Love, heaven’s mentor of all Cupids. It was he who devised the list of humans scheduled to find love. It was he, evidently, who held the secret to curing the Mark of Cain.

When Castiel arrived at the Bunker, Chamuel, Sam, and Dean were already waiting for him. Well, Chamuel and Sam were, at least. Dean, feeling the effects of the Mark worsen, had barricaded himself inside the cell they had once used to hold Crowley. The need for an immediate cure weighed heavily on Castiel’s mind.

A bowl sat in front of Chamuel, Enochian symbols engraved on its sides and a strange assortment of herbs making up its contents. Castiel recognized Lavender, Rose, Sage, Myrrh, and a few other, more obscure ingredients. Chamuel explained that only one more item was required to complete the spell.

“What is it?” Sam implored.

“Love,” came the frank reply.

The Mark, the archangel continued, was designed to conquer three specific varieties of love. First, Cain had killed Abel and, with him, familial love. Next, as Cain had driven the knife into Colette, he had simultaneously obliterated romantic love. Finally, in slaughtering his allies, the Knights of Hell, Cain had murdered platonic love.  
“This is why the Mark urges Dean to kill his ally, his angel, and, finally, his brother.”

Sam raised his eyebrows in surprise, began to speak, then thought better of it. Castiel squinted and tilted his head.

“But how are we to add ‘love’?” He asked.

“You are to find one item in Dean’s timeline that properly exemplifies familial, romantic, and platonic love,” Chamuel responded.

“Wait a second,” Sam requested. “Why can’t you get it?”

Chamuel sighed. “The spell dictates that the grace of the angel who retrieves the item will be intrinsically linked with it. In order for the process to be complete —”

“— the angel must relinquish their grace,” Castiel finished.

Chamuel nodded. “You will live, but you will live as a human.”

“Wait, Cas —” Sam started.

Castiel didn’t give him a chance to finish. He was already gone.


	2. To Lovers

A smooth rock, given to Dean on the playground by his first crush. Dean had kept it for years, eventually not even remembering why. Romantic love.

A toy car, one with which Dean used to play with his best friend in seventh grade. It had been the longest he had ever stayed at one school. Platonic love.

An amulet given to Dean by his brother, Sam. It would later be used to track god. Familial love.

It wasn’t until a little over 40 years into Dean’s timeline that Castiel located the item he was looking for. It radiated pure love of every kind. Castiel landed roughly five decades later than he had intended. His fading grace did not allow him particularly good aim.

He found himself sitting in a hospital, seated before a bed. Beside him was a young man with spiky brown hair and mischievous, yet sad green eyes. On the man’s other side sat a middle aged woman, her dark hair beginning to gray, but her blue eyes still clearer than a woman half her age. She did not seem surprised to see the angel, didn’t even turn.

“He said you’d be here soon,” she stated.

Castiel turned his attention to the man in the hospital bed. He had old wrinkled skin and faded blue eyes crinkled with smile lines. His hair was gray streaked with silver. He wore two gold bands on his ring finger. Castiel recognized one of them as the item he had followed here.

“Hello again,” the old man wheezed.

Castiel turned his attention from the wedding band to look into his own aging eyes.

“Hello.”

“You’ve come for the ring.”

“Yes.”

The old man twirled the bands around his finger.

“Love is a very strange thing, isn’t it?” He murmured.

The angel merely nodded.

“I never really understood it until I met the Winchesters. Dean, in particular. But of course, he was always our definition of love, wasn’t he?”

“Dean is our friend,” Castiel agreed.

“And our family,” his elder counterpart added, “and, one day…” He trailed off, smiling. “But you’ve already figured that out, I’m sure. Why else would I have these?”

With that, he tugged both rings from his finger and handed them to the angel.

“Take both of them. You’ll need them, one day.”

Castiel took the rings reverently. He realized, now, that they both oozed pure love, more powerful than he had ever felt in all his years of existence. The old man beside him began to cough, a hacking sound that brought the two other people in the room to his side immediately.

“Dad,” the young man coaxed.

The woman said nothing, but her eyes shone with a resigned sorrow.

A small smile crawled its way across the fallen angel’s face.

“I loved his in every way I knew how, and then some,” he chuckled to an angel no longer in the room. His eyes trailed upwards.

“Hello, Dean.”


	3. To Family

The potion was complete. Chamuel had chanted an ancient blessing, and the energy had seeped into Castiel’s grace. The wedding bands were left nearly devoid of all the love that had once been stored in them. Blank slates.

Now the angel stood before a being straddling the line between man and demon. What a curious thing, Dean Winchester. Even smothered with an energy made solely of hate, Castiel still found himself incapable of loathing.

What happened next would forever be a hazy memory. Lips met, grace burned away hatred, an angel screamed, a demon howled, and then two humans were all that were left, thrumming with an energy that would never truly dissipate.

• • • • • • • • • •

One year later, the man who had promised never to say yes to the angels beamed at the fallen one kneeling before him and made an exception.

One year later, the fallen angel who had promised never to capitulate to emotions gazed at the man standing before him and promised to love him in every way he knew how.


End file.
